Ignition
by SomniumofLight
Summary: After his father disappeared in Russia, Artemis Fowl goes on a desperate hunt for both information and funds to find him and makes a mistake in the process. A mistake that ends up opening new doors for him that he didn't even know were closed. (Ie: Artemis Fowl has Mist Flames. The Mafia world won't know what hit it.) Part 1 of the Ignis Fatuus series.
1. In Which a Mistake is Made

**Sooooo… this happened. I was trying to write more Magicae est Potestas, but… yeah, no, apparently my muse decided that wasn't going to happen, so have this glorious mess of a crossover in the meantime! *shoves fic at readers***

 **Also, since daniel knows next to nothing about KHR and can't help me with stuff like canon details and continuity errors on that side of things, feel free to give me feedback on that sort of thing! Heck, leave book reviews if you want to, haha! Thank you! ^.^**

* * *

Being a criminal was a truly paradoxical state of being.

There were many, _many_ states of being that both individual humans and humanity itself could exist within. A pacifist could lash out with words that hurt worse than any bullet when properly enraged. Another could be a priest, a man of God meant to uphold holy words and cleanse churchgoers of their sins, and yet be so greedy as to rob his own pious followers. And criminals, despite often breaking, warping, and exploiting the rules of polite society, could have their own laws that they followed right down to the very last letter. Thieves could refuse to steal from the poor. Prostitutes could refuse the advances of a married man. In the deepest belly of the underworld ruled by organized crime, there were vows to be made, vows of silence to be obeyed without question.

Amongst these scions of criminals, there was one bloodline that abided by a single unique creed, a creed of three words that generation upon generation of their family had followed come hell or high water. That family was known by the name of Fowl, and their simple creed? _Aurum est potestas_ , gold is power.

The Fowls had been dabbling on the wrong side of the law for almost as long as their family had existed. For centuries, they dug for themselves footholds and handholds in the shadowy underworld, taking root there and refusing to be weeded out, be it by the law or by other illegal factions. All manner of criminal jewels could be found on their gilded family tree – hardly a generation went by that could be called innocent or law-abiding. Burgling, racketeering, smuggling, art fraud, information brokering – the Fowls had done it all, every possible crime on the planet and all manners of illegal and occasional legal pursuits had been pursued for the sake of filling the family vaults with as much gold as was feasibly possible, and all without a single scrap of evidence to leave to law enforcement that could prove their involvement.

And of all the Fowls to ever plunder gold to line the family's pockets with, Artemis Fowl the Second was rapidly putting all his money-mongering ancestors to shame.

At first glance (a very _superficial_ first glance), the average layman might not think much of Artemis Fowl, except possibly to note that the boy _clearly_ needed to spend more time outdoors. He was a slight child, with sharp aristocratic features, raven black hair, and pale skin that suited a vampire more than a supposedly healthy growing boy. But any and all casual observation of Artemis Fowl stopped at piercing blue eyes, because _no_ normal child had eyes like shards of sapphire that were so sharp you could practically cut yourself on them. And, appropriately enough, Artemis's mind was just as sharp as his eyes, perhaps even sharper.

When other children were reading Jack and Jill, Artemis had his nose buried in a psychology textbook. When other children were learning two plus two, Artemis was writing complex algebraic equations in his notebook. When other children were building stick figures with popsicle sticks and glue, Artemis was picking apart the inner workings of a computer and flawlessly putting them back together again. And when other children were roughhousing or crying or being walked circles around by adult logic, Artemis observed the world with clinical detachment and talked circles around his supposed teachers with an air of chilly superiority. And of all of these oddities, what perhaps made the boy the oddest out of any of his "peers" was that he came by every last one of these quirks _honestly_. (And there was no doubt in anyone's eyes that the Fowl heir did indeed come by his smarts honestly, because the one time that a teacher accused him of cheating, the boy gave the startled man a tongue-lashing so severe that he resigned that same day as a crying, blubbering mess. After that, no one dared ever accuse Artemis of cheating _ever again,_ and many teachers surreptitiously bought rowan crosses to wear somewhere on their person. It never did them much good, but it made them feel better.)

But while there was no doubt that Artemis was exemplary at academics, the place where the boy truly reigned supreme was not in textbooks and equations, but in shady dealings taught to him on his father's knee. From the moment that his son could walk on his own two feet, Artemis Fowl Senior would teach him how to succeed when dancing on the other side of the thin blue line patrolled by the law. By the time he was eight years old, little Artemis could plan flawless heists, forge perfect Impressionist paintings that were auctioned for truly ludicrous prices, and extort and manipulate almost any person on the face of the planet. He had learned the value of having an alibi, of blackmail, of acting, of holding all his cards close to his chest until just the right moment to play them. And, in the true way of Fowls everywhere, every last one of those skills was used to make the world dance to his own tune. So excellent at crime was he that to Artemis Fowl, crime was a game, a game to see who could amass the most money in their own personal hoard, and none was better at playing the game of criminal mastermind than Artemis himself.

And then, one fateful say shortly after his ninth birthday, the game ended. Artemis Senior had set out mere days before from Dublin's harbor on his new ship, the _Fowl Star_ , bound for Murmansk, Russia. It was a surprisingly legal business venture, especially for a Fowl – there hadn't been a single illegal good on board, just hundreds of thousands of crates of cola, and not a single criminal, not even a petty thief, in the crew rosters. Artemis's father kissed his wife goodbye, told Artemis _"not to plan any heists without me_ " with an amused but stern smile, just like every time he'd ever left on a long trip for the family business.

This time, however, things would be very, very different. This time, days after the _Fowl Star_ pulled out of the harbor, Artemis flicked on the television set in his room to be treated to the sight of the wreckage of his father's ship displayed on international news, and all the boy could do, for a heart-stoppingly long time, was numbly watch the screen as the news anchor painstakingly described what little was known about the catastrophe.

 _The ship was sunk by a Stinger missile launched from a warehouse on the docks. The cargo bay was utterly destroyed. Sixteen confirmed fatalities, no known survivors at present time. And, worst of all, no signs of the ship's owner, Artemis Fowl Senior._

 _This cannot be real_ , Artemis distinctly remembered thinking, even years later. _I know my father. He took every possible precaution he could. I was_ there _when he was doing his research. He made certain the crew was trustworthy, searched Murmansk for any possible enemies of the family that might try to take him out._ There was simply no way his father had been so utterly blindsided, and _certainly_ no way for his father to have been _killed._

And yet there was the evidence before his very eyes, scrolling past on the television screen, and Artemis's sheltered little world was crumbling down around his ears.

* * *

Artemis wasn't the only one who took the news (false news, false, it had to be, his father _wasn't dead)_ poorly. For the first few weeks following the disaster, his mother, Angeline Fowl, drifted about the manor in a daze, pale as a ghost and fraught with denial. She attempted to call her husband's phone (the line was dead), the number of the hotel where he would have been staying if he had ever reached Murmansk (he had never checked in), his bodyguard's phone (that one rung, but the person who picked it up was unfamiliar, and informed Angeline that the Butler that had served at her husband's side for years had been fished out of the bay, dead as a doornail). She called every number she could think of and a few that Artemis offered that she would not have thought to check on her own, typed up emails with trembling fingers, paid for search parties to search through Murmansk for any signs of her husband (those search parties never returned, and the prices being named for each search grew higher and higher with every confirmed disappearance). With every new attempt to find Artemis Senior, a horrid, fragile hope would blossom on her face, only to wilt away with every confirmed failure, every person that refused to reply or sent her a negative response.

Weeks after the catastrophe that had torn their family apart, she finally snapped, weeks of grief and shattered hope fueling her breakdown. She screamed into the phone receiver, ( _her husband wasn't dead, he_ ** _wasn't_ **_, he was_ ** _coming back_ **_)_ , threw the phone into the wall without bothering to hang up, and locked herself in the attic lounge that she and Artemis's father spent so much time in, and the only sound that could be heard through the door whenever Artemis passed by were wretched sobs and screams of denial.

Her meltdown was the last straw, and Artemis, who had been clinging to his father's words ( _not last words, never last)_ from the harbor, _don't plan any heists without me,_ disobeyed his father for the first time in his life, and dove back into the familiar territory of the criminal underworld. He tore through his father's (and his bodyguard Butler's) contacts like a hurricane, bribing and blackmailing for all he was worth in a desperate search for information and steadily draining hundreds of thousands of euros from the family vaults in his desperation.

For one whole gut-wrenching month, he found nothing. Not a single contact of the family had been near Murmansk at the time of the attack, and not a single individual in the Fowl empire knew who might be responsible. Artemis trawled through hundreds of false leads and infuriatingly _useless_ conversations that took every last scrap of his willpower to keep his words chilly and polite. With every new failure ( _he had never failed before and he couldn't afford to fail_ now _)_ , he grew more and more irritable, sending acidic words flying from his mouth at every interruption and manor servants scurrying away in haste. He locked himself in his father's study and refused to leave, even for meals, and with every lash of his razor-sharp tongue fewer and fewer servants interrupted him, until only Butler dared to intrude on his search with sandwiches and tea, and soft words of advice that Artemis sometimes followed.

Finally, though, after countless sleepless nights that left unsightly dark circles underneath his eyes, Artemis found the bare bones of a clue that he frantically searched for.

 _Two days before Artemis Senior was scheduled to arrive in Kola Bay, several men were seen moving a suspiciously large container, large enough to hold a Stinger missile launcher, into the same warehouse that the missile had been fired from._

It was only the merest _scrap_ of a clue, a mere whisper in the sea of information that had already failed him, but that was more than enough for Artemis. It took comparatively little time for him to find the men that had been spotted, and identify them with assistance from Butler's Interpol contacts – and when they _had_ been identified, Artemis felt an arctic chill run up his spine.

 _The men were enforcers, working directly under Britva, the man in command of the Russian Mafia._

Despite his father's preferences for accruing allies with debts to pay and favors owed, he had still had enemies. The Russian mafia in particular, Artemis knew, _loathed_ the Fowls, though the origins of their hatred lay not with his father, but his grandfather, who had danced circles around the Russian crime syndicate, tearing them down over and over with ruthless efficiency only for Britva's organization to rise from their own ashes again like a particularly embittered old phoenix. Being repeatedly toppled from their fragile throne had done no favors for the relations between the two criminal empires, and in hindsight, the Stinger missile was a predictable response to a Fowl trying to cut himself a piece of Russia's market – and the disappearances of the search parties equally predictable, when they were searching for a Fowl in enemy territory.

It was even possible that there was more than one criminal syndicate involved in this disastrous affair. The Russian mafia was far from the only criminal syndicate to loathe the Fowls. With so few markets in the underground to take advantage of, the criminal world was ruthlessly competitive, and the Fowls were very, _very_ good at taking what they wanted. Many a mafia Famiglia had tried to steal resources from under the Fowl's noses, only to be thwarted every time, and sometimes ruthlessly disbanded and absorbed by the Fowl criminal empire when they tried to retaliate. Others had sent assassins, and it was only his family's steady alliance with the Butlers that had saved many an ancestor (and even Artemis himself, once) from death by enraged mafioso. Part of Artemis's criminal education had been warnings on which of the mafia syndicates to avoid, and he could count a frighteningly large number of organizations, from the Russian mafia to the Vongola family in Italy, that would pay entire fortunes to have a Fowl's head handed to them on a silver platter.

Was his father even still alive?

 _No. Stop it. He's still alive. He has to be. There's no body. It's just a matter of finding him._

Which was easier said than done, when your search parties kept disappearing, euros were vanishing from the family vaults, and the prices for hiring search parties were only being hiked up higher and higher with every failure on Russian soil. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before the Fowl fortune was drained dry.

Fortunately, Artemis knew more than enough tricks to keep the coffers flowing, at least until he found his father – or his father's body.

* * *

Of course, finding his father was easier said than done. Artemis _knew_ this, could run the numerical odds in his head right down to the last decimal point, but he hadn't anticipated the sheer _magnitudes_ of difficulty he would have with his search.

In the first two months following his father's disappearance, Artemis paid a large number of search parties to scan Murmansk and the countryside around it. Predictably, within the first month after arriving in Russia, most of these search parties either quit or disappeared, and the base price for the search-and-rescue teams rose significantly. Despite this, Artemis kept hiring more people, sometimes practically shoving the money down their throats to get them to agree with him, and while waiting for news of (inevitable) failure, he worked diligently at accruing more revenue to fund the searches. He hacked into businessmen's bank accounts, draining them dry (and not-quite-accidentally rendering at least two small companies completely bankrupt), auctioned off the Impressionist forgeries he had created over the last several months at ludicrous prices under a variety of aliases, and sold several legal patents to fervent buyers. He studiously went through some of the most expensive items in the manor, sorting through which ones he could sell and which ones he or his mother would wish to keep, and sold some of the more priceless artifacts online with a heavy heart.

By the third month following his father's disappearance, the amount of money he was paying for the search-and-rescue teams was exponentially larger, draining hundreds of thousands of euros from the family accounts at a time. On top of the fees for the rescue teams, Artemis's mother, struggling for some semblance of normalcy after months of drifting through the manor halls like a distant crying ghost, began donating massive amounts of money to various charities and organizations, and soon Artemis was struggling to earn a profit with so much money being spent. After the fifth charity donation, Artemis confronted his mother about her expenditures, furious at the waste of resources, and the resulting row had his mother locking herself in the attic lounge once more, refusing to emerge even for meals, and left Artemis feeling like his soul was _bleeding_.

In the fourth and fifth months, his mother's expenditures had at least gone down, but the damage had already been done. In only a few months, the Fowls had lost a large percentage of their massive fortune. They were far from destitute, with millions still left, but the status of billionaires was no longer theirs to claim. With so much of the family's money still wrapped up in funding the Russian search parties (which had covered a little over a fourth of the country by now, centered around Murmansk), the family vaults were losing money faster than Artemis could earn it, and so he finally deemed it necessary to start taking greater risks. He stepped off the safe, beaten trail he had trodden for most of his childhood and down more and more ridiculous paths. He started targeting larger legal corporations with his hacking, careful not to leave a single trace in their systems as he drained the bank accounts of CEOs and managers. He forged "lost" journals by DaVinci to sell to various history buffs around the world. He sold more artifacts from the manor, ruthlessly squashing the pangs of emotion he felt in his chest with every piece of his childhood he sold. On one spectacular occasion, Artemis somehow found himself selling the Pyramids of Giza to some rich idiot online under one of his many aliases, and netted several millions of euros out of that deal (and carefully erased all traces of the alias used, right down to the paper trail left behind, while swearing to never sell national monuments again. What had he been _thinking?)_ And while the more ridiculous thefts and forgeries certainly netted him exorbitant amounts of gold (and a certain amount of bitter pride, because he knew for a fact his father had _never_ done anything like this), every ridiculous new source income made him feel like he was being stabbed violently in the chest with his own emotions, and like, with every new ridiculous source of income, his father was getting farther and farther away…

Six months after his father's disappearance, the search parties had covered a little more ground, and Artemis finally directed several of them back to Murmansk, hoping the months of no activity in the city would allow the search parties to go unnoticed. For several weeks, it seemed to have worked – the search parties reported in daily, and Artemis would mark the areas they'd been able to search on a satellite map of Murmansk he'd had printed. However, a couple of weeks in, as one search team had started moving in on one particular part of the city – a residential area – they'd simply vanished, just like all the others, and within a day, all the other search teams had also gone missing. And when Artemis had managed to redirect one of the other search teams outside the city to the location of that first missing team, they found a residential apartment with evidence of several people having up and left in a hurry – and evidence of a _hostage._

If Artemis had been a normal child, he would have thrown the keyboard across the room. _His father had been in that apartment._ He sincerely doubted there was another businessman that had been anywhere near Murmansk that could have been held hostage there – or that the mafia would have reason to hold hostage there. He'd been too impatient, and _his father_ had been _moved._

Artemis was not a reckless child, but every human being on the face of the planet, even child genii, was susceptible to the horrible siren's song of _rage,_ and Artemis's cold fury was almost apocalyptic in its intensity. _His father had been moved out of his reach._ He had no doubts that Britva had most likely had his hostage moved out of Murmansk after one of his opponent's teams had stumbled across the apartment that Artemis Senior was being held in, and now _he had no idea where to start looking again!_

He didn't _dare_ hack anyone from the Russian mafia, not even anyone as low on their social totem pole as a petty thief. That could very well provoke Britva into _disposing_ of his father, and no one could be saved as a corpse. But, Artemis reasoned in his uncharacteristic moment of illogical emotion, there might be _others_ he could hack for the information. Britva was bound to have allies outside of Russia, even if only so as to have foreign goods to ship into the country.

Month number seven was when, after calming down and using several weeks to carefully create several aliases, complete with official paperwork and passports and satellite connections that would confuse anyone trying to hack him back, Artemis began to hack into mafia databases. The first organization whose databases he ripped into was a small one, a group of gangs that operated just inside Mongolia's border with Russia. What little information he found on Britva's organization was supremely unhelpful, and so, after stealing a few hundred thousand euros' worth of money from the gang leaders' accounts, he moved on to another target, further west along the border. For a whole month, he struck at small syndicates along Russia's borders using a variety of aliases, searching their electronic databases for information and draining their leader's bank accounts of money. Though other hackers tried to hack him back several times, they never managed to get into his systems, rebuffed by firewalls and Artemis's own carefully prepared IP re-router, and every time one of the hackers almost got "personal" information on the alias currently being used, he would switch to another one. He ran circles around mafia hackers in his efforts to crack into their systems and, as the smaller gangs and mobs proved to be useless for his search, soon began to cautiously rip into the databases of larger organizations.

By month eight, Artemis hadn't been able to find a single shred of evidence as to where his father might have been taken, despite discovering several small criminal syndicates outside of Russia's borders that the Russian mafia was allied with. He hadn't dared touch any of the larger organizations, such as the Chinese triads, and the smaller gangs and mobs had been absolutely unhelpful. With no other choice, Artemis began raking in more money for search parties, draining a few small mob bosses' accounts dry out of what was, for him, petty anger before moving on to bigger and better things. With most of the most expensive artifacts in the manor having been sold, and no forgeries to sell at the time (and Artemis's own refusal to ever sell national monuments to anyone _ever again)_ , the largest source of criminal revenue he now had access to was what he could steal from the bank accounts of gangs and mafia bosses. He robbed several small Familgias in Italy blind, careful not to attack any of the larger ones (and especially careful not to attack any allies of the Vongola or the Vongola itself – he couldn't afford to deal with assassins with his mother's mental health rapidly deteriorating and only Butler and a few nervous servants to protect him), before moving on to syndicates in other countries. Throughout the month he methodically worked his way through the Eurasian continent, hunting for information on some of the smaller mafia families and bleeding their accounts dry when he could get away with it.

At the beginning of the ninth month, when he entered the converted attic lounge that his mother had slowly migrated all her personal belongings into over the course of several months, his mother's mind finally snapped. She didn't recognize him. _She didn't recognize her own son._ Instead, she _screamed_ at him, demanding to know who he was and what he'd done to her husband and _her little Arty_ , and threw one of the many expensive vases she'd saved from the mass selling of manor artifacts at his head. If Butler had not been there, had not pulled him to the left a mere moment before the vase could impact against his skull, then Artemis might have been _killed,_ murdered by his own mother in a moment of insanity.

With that realization, he fled from the room like the devil himself was on his heels, for once choosing cowardice over the stubborn fearlessness his father had ruthlessly trained into him. He locked himself in his father's his office, sank down in his seat, and struggled to stifle the horrible pangs of shock and horror that filled his chest.

At this point in time, Artemis had hacked so many small mafia families, gangs, and mobs that it was almost automatic for him to seek out a criminal syndicate to steal from, even when lost in abnormally intense emotions. And so, hardly paying attention and longing for _some_ kind of stress relief, Artemis hacked into the account of the first criminal boss he managed to stumble across, draining it dry

And while it certainly helped him calm down, let him wipe away the blurry almost-tears in his eyes and steel himself to face the world outside his office again, it would prove to be one of the worst (or, depending on the context, later on, the _best_ ) mistakes Artemis Fowl the Second would ever make.

* * *

Once, when the man that Artemis Fowl the Second would know simply as Butler had been much younger, and was an up-and-coming young prodigy in the Butler echelons, he'd asked his granduncle, then a seasoned bodyguard of Artemis Senior's father, what it was like to guard one of the notorious Fowls.

"Not worth the trouble, that's what it's like," the grizzled old veteran had said with exasperation, and had left it at that.

Butler hadn't understood, at the time, why his granduncle would say this. He was still young, with a fresh blue diamond tattoo on his shoulder to show the world that he'd survived Madame Ko's teachings, and he had yet to actually meet any of the Fowl family in person. To him, just like with most of the family, the Fowls were a distant, nigh-untouchable presence, like royalty on their thrones. To be chosen to guard one of the Fowls was perhaps one of the greatest honors any of the Butler family could be given – the Fowls only chose the _best of the best_ to guard their next generation, and if a Fowl said you were the best, then you _were_.

Even when, decades later, Butler was called by Artemis Fowl Senior and asked to be the bodyguard of the man's infant son, he wouldn't understand his granduncle – or his uncle's – exasperation with their duty until his young charge hacked into the accounts of a businessman with known mafia connections and drained said accounts completely dry of coffers. At which point, the mountainous Eurasian manservant blinked at his smugly smiling young charge, at the boy's father praising him for a heist well-done but tacking on a _cover your tracks better next time, son_ at the end, and suddenly he had a bone-deep understanding as to _why_ his elders had been so exasperated with their principals: because, clearly, the Fowls had decided somewhere along the line that _common sense,_ such as _discouraging defenseless young children from hacking into the bank accounts of men who could order hits on them,_ was beneath them.

When he'd shared this revelation with his uncle that night, during their nightly patrols, the older man had simply laughed and told Butler with a sardonic smile that _he hadn't seen_ anything _yet_. And yet again, Butler had been skeptical until after his charge's father had disappeared in the Arctic, and Artemis had subconsciously decided that his new mission in life was to turn everything he did up to eleven and turn Butler's hair prematurely white in the process. Just how many heart attacks could this boy give him?

The answer to that question had been _insurmountable,_ and after the pyramid incident, Butler had found himself looking heavenwards during a rare moment of solitude and apologizing silently to his deceased uncles for ever doubting them. Keeping up with a stressed, _desperate_ Fowl's antics was perhaps one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do in his life, and it could only get worse from here on out. But, as a Butler, it was his job, his _duty_ to keep up with his young charge. He couldn't back out, and _wouldn't_ , no matter how exasperated he got. Not just for the sake of his duty as a Butler, but also for Artemis's own sake, because no matter how intelligent Artemis was, _anyone_ could make a mistake if they were desperate enough, and one mistake would be all it took for one of the many criminal syndicates Artemis hacked into to find out exactly _who_ had hacked them, and retaliate.

The day that Artemis actually made that mistake he'd been silently prepared for was one of the worst days he'd experienced since the _Fowl Star_ had been sunk. While he was supposed to remain unattached to his principal, it was difficult to remain emotionally distant to a boy whom you had watched over from childhood – and even the most hardened of mercenaries would be at least a little horrified when watching a boy's own _mother_ attack him in a fit of insanity. One second slower, and Butler would have failed his principal, would have lost the boy to a disturbed Angeline Fowl – and even worse than that knowledge was the look of horrified, shocked realization in Artemis's eyes when the boy's brain had figured out what had just happened.

He'd let the boy run off on his own then. Butler could have easily kept up with him, if he had felt he needed to, but for the first time since he had been assigned to guard the boy, he'd let his emotions get the better of him. Artemis had just been _attacked_ by the woman meant to nurture and raise him, to support him in times of crisis, and he _knew_ his charge by now. Artemis would not want his ultimate moment of weakness to be witnessed by anyone, not even Butler, and Butler was all too willing to let the boy recover before he went searching for him.

When Butler had finally entered the office that had once belonged to Artemis Senior a little over an hour later, he'd found that in his desperation to calm down and distract himself from the second disaster of his young life, Artemis Fowl had hacked into the accounts of yet another criminal syndicate's boss. He hadn't thought much of it, at the time. Even in moments of extreme emotion, Artemis was more logical than a dozen crime bosses together ever could be, always dancing circles around his opponents without a single mistake to be exploited by enemies or allies alike, and Butler had had other things to worry about than the consequences of another hacking spree – specifically, his charge's mental well-being, which, though shaken, had returned almost to normal.

Weeks later, Butler would curse being emotionally compromised when it came to the Irish boy because, as it turned out, in his absence Artemis had finally made a mistake that could prove to be lethal. The group that he hacked had, thanks to Artemis being distracted by his own emotions, been able to hack him back and find out exactly who had invaded their systems. And they didn't appreciate a _Fowl_ being the one to steal from their bank accounts.

* * *

The day that the consequences of Artemis's emotionally-fueled hacking caught up with him was almost ten months after his father's disappearance, and a little under two months before he turned ten. Once again, the Irish boy was at his desk, dark circles under his eyes as he tapped away at the keyboard before him. Outside, the sun was beginning to set, painting the overcast grey sky with weak shades of orange and red at the horizons, and leftover moisture from a rainstorm earlier that day clung to the window panes. The manor was quiet, with only the distant thrumming of electricity and the occasional sounds of footsteps as servants finished up their nightly duties to break the silence.

Artemis's fingers stopped typing, and his lips pursed in a stormy frown as he glared at the monitor before him.

 _Yet another dead end._

The boy made a soft sound of frustration, leaning back in his swivel chair and reaching for the cup of Earl Gray Butler had left for him perhaps an hour ago. The tea had cooled down considerably since then, but at this point the tea was more an attempt at a distraction from his ongoing failures than anything else.

 _What am I missing?_

Artemis could count on one hand how many times he had actually _failed_ at anything before his father's ship had sunk, and still have fingers left over. _Failure_ was not an option for a Fowl – Fowls were supposed to always be at the top, never fall behind the competition, and if on the off chance someone did get one over them, they were supposed to _destroy_ the transgressors that dared challenge them. He'd utterly demolished his competition in everything from school academics to professional heists to hacking for _years,_ and then the _Fowl Star_ had been sunk, and everything had gone wrong. Suddenly he was _falling behind_ , unable to keep up with Britva's organization and allies as the Russians danced circles around his efforts and _taunted_ him with what meager information they'd let slip about his father.

 _No one_ had ever bested Artemis before today. _No one._ Certainly not a criminal organization so easily taken down in the past as the _Russian mafia_. And yet here he was, being lead on a wild goose chase no matter what he attempted. If he hadn't known for a fact it was _actually happening_ , he would have put it down to some horrid hallucination. But as it was, it _was_ actually happening, and he had no idea _how_. Which meant, based on prior experience from the distant days when his family had still been whole and healthy, that he was missing some crucial piece of information that was keeping him from his end goal.

 _What trump card does Britva have that I keep missing? What is it that's helping them keep my father out of my reach?_

With an irritated sigh, Artemis placed his tea back on the cupholder it had been resting on. There was nothing for it but to keep searching. This particular lead may have turned out to be yet another dead end, but he had other possible leads he could check that could very well at least give him a clue.

Artemis was about to put his fingers back on the keyboard and bring up the contact information of a man from Butler's network of contacts when his cell phone, which had been resting innocently on the desk at his elbow, buzzed softly to let him know of an incoming call.

There was only one person in the world who knew his number, and last Artemis had checked, Butler had been patrolling the grounds like he'd done every night for almost a decade. What reason could he have for calling?

A frisson of dread slowly curled in his gut as Artemis answered the phone. "Butler? Is something wrong?"

"There might be." The Eurasian's voice was as calm and level as it always was, but, if you knew what to listen for, there was an undertone of tense caution to every word. "I'm in the southeastern quadrant of the grounds, near the wall, and I heard an odd sound that didn't sound like any of the manor animals. Like metal scraping against stone."

Artemis quickly used his free hand to access Fowl Manor's security systems, checking the cameras along the southeast walls. A brief scan of the newly split screen showed no signs of intruders, and the familiar hulking figure of his manservant with a phone pressed to his ear and scanning his surroundings with suspicion. That particular camera, Artemis noted, seemed to be suffering some technical difficulties, the feed jittering at the edges as if it was about to dissolve into static.

"There doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary in your quadrant, Butler, save for some technical difficulties with the camera closest to your position."

On-screen, Butler's frown carved itself deeper into his face. "Nothing at all?"

Artemis cast another cursory glance over the screen. An indigo glitch flickered across one corner of the camera with its sights trained on Butler, but save for that…

"Nothing abnormal whatsoever," he confirmed. "That being said, I trust your instincts, Butler. Feel free to check the grounds for intruders personally."

"Ten-four, Artemis. I'll come back up to the office if I don't find anything."

Butler hung up, and Artemis set his phone back on the desk with a frown. Then, keeping one eye on the camera feeds (it was a rare occasion that Butler's instincts were wrong), he ran a quick systems check first, checking for camera loops and other bugs that might betray unseen intruders, then checked the statuses of each individual camera along the southeastern wall. Most were perfectly functional, save for the one camera still focused on the location where Butler had called him from, which still seemed to be malfunctioning, along with another camera further down the wall from Butler's position. There wasn't even so much as a single flicker of shadow out of place, save for those glitches, not a single sign of an incursion to be found.

The child genius huffed and wrote down a note to repair the two malfunctioning cameras before turning his attention back to Butler on screen. The manservant had just completed a secondary circuit along the wall, his pensive expression beginning to morph into puzzlement. Finally, Butler looked around until he found the camera closest to his position, and held one arm out, fist clenched with his thumb pointed up.

All clear, then. There were no intruders on the grounds, at least none that Butler had been able to find.

 _I suppose even Butler is prone to paranoia sometimes,_ Artemis mused, reluctantly amused by the idea, as he flicked off the security feeds. _Then again, I haven't exactly made it easy for him, and it_ has _been a bit of a rough month for the two of us…_

 _(A normally beautiful face, twisted and fraught with madness, eyes wild,_ ** _what did you do to my little Arty?!_ **_)_

He shuddered, and quickly shoved the horrible image that had struggled to the forefront of his mind back into his subconscious, where it belonged, and went back to work.

By the time there was a knock at the door signifying Butler's return, Artemis had contacted a couple of the man's contacts, crossed two more possible leads off the list, and had finished his cup of Earl Grey. When he called out a soft _enter_ , Butler pushed open the door with one hand, his other holding a fresh cup of tea.

Artemis took the cup with a wordless murmur of thanks and took several sips before setting it down where his first cup rested and turning his attention to his manservant.

"No signs of incursion?"

The mountainous bodyguard shook his head, his eyes looking oddly exhausted. "Nothing. There wasn't so much as a single flower out of place."

Artemis's lips pursed. "And yet something is still bothering you?"

Butler grimaced but nodded. "I didn't find anything, but I think it's best that I keep an eye on things tonight, just in case." The manservant studied him for a moment, brow furrowed. "Any luck with finding your father?"

"No," Artemis said, more sharply than strictly necessary. He paused, then grimaced, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "I apologize for my irritability, but… no. No luck."

Thankfully, Butler did not pry any further. Instead, he simply reached out to pat Artemis's shoulder once - a rare show of sympathy for the usually professional bodyguard - and then turned to leave the office.

Halfway to the door, Butler suddenly paused, his eyes darting around the room, and, noticing this out of the corner of his eye, Artemis glanced at his bodyguard with a frown, opening his mouth to ask what the matter was. Before he could, however, there was _thunk,_ something heavy impacting against a hard surface, and Butler toppled over as if struck down.

"Butler?!" Artemis bolted up from his chair, eyes wide – and his eyes went even wider still as his vision was suddenly blocked by an obstruction that hadn't been there moments before, something dark, and something cold and metallic pressed into the skin between his eyes.

"You've got bigger things to worry about than your pet mountain over there, _Fowl."_

Slowly, following the sinister purr of the unfamiliar voice, Artemis's eyes slid up until they found the face of a stranger with blue-streaked hair, smirking at him past the _gun_ held against his skull. A man that _should not have been there._ He was already running as many calculations in his head as he could, thoughts sharpening into cold lines of steel, and there was _no feasible way_ that this man could have appeared from nowhere as he had, no feasible way he could have _gotten past Butler._

And yet here he was _,_ his grin growing wider, a budding slasher smile _._ "What's the matter, boy? Cat got your tongue? That's no fun…"

Despite the blood-thirst evident in every line of his face, the man's expression was almost playful. _Playful,_ as if having somehow snuck into Fowl Manor under the lenses of hundreds of advanced security cameras, past a member of the _Butler family,_ knocking said Butler out, and then holding a _Fowl_ at _gunpoint_ was a _game_ to him.

 _It_ is _a game to him,_ Artemis realized, seeing the glints of amusement in the assassin's (for what else _could_ he be?) eyes. _He really does think of this as_ fun.

 _How_ ** _dare_ **_he._

Artemis fought the urge to sneer. He was at gunpoint, _moments_ away from death, and Butler wasn't able to stop it. Purposefully antagonizing the man sent to kill him would be _idiotic_ , and Artemis Fowl the Second was _no idiot._ As much as it galled him for his current situation to be found _amusing_ by the gunman, he would not let his emotions get the better of him.

 _If he's_ playing _with me, then he's not going to kill me yet. Which means I have options._

"… I find it curious that I've never heard of an assassin of your apparent caliber," Artemis said, after carefully arranging the words in his head and double-checking them for the acidic vitriol that wanted to make itself known. "It takes talent to get past one of the Butler family."

The assassin's grin grew wider and considerably nastier. "Oh, so you _can_ talk. Fantastic." He leaned forward, putting more pressure on the gun until Artemis was certain the barrel was going to leave a bruise on his forehead ( _assuming he survived this encounter at all)._ "And you apparently think you're _real_ clever, don't you, Fowl? Trying to butter me up, so I spill a few secrets? That's not gonna work – I'm not one of your petty little _subordinates_."

Despite the insulted tone of voice, the assassin's expression remained fixed, sadistically amused at his attempts to fish for information - and was that a glimpse of a flash of unnatural blue-violet in his dark eyes, or just his imagination?

"Of course not," Artemis said smoothly, a picture of perfect calm despite his hammering heart. "I know better than to attempt to flatter an opponent into giving up their secrets. It hardly ever works. I was simply stating an honest fact."

It was subtle, but Artemis could see the sadistic smile twisting into something a touch more prideful, the man's aggression at his apparent attempts at manipulation easing.

"So, even a _Fowl_ knows quality when he sees it, then? Nice to be appreciated."

That _loathing._ The man hadn't bothered hiding his disdain of the word _Fowl_ , and that helped narrow down the number of people that could have sent him, if only slightly. This was no opportunistic assassination – this man held a _grudge_ against the Fowl family. Artemis quickly searched through his memories for people he knew to be an enemy of the Fowl family. There were a great deal of them, but, judging by the man's subtle accent, he was probably European, which narrowed down the number of possible enemies significantly. The Fowls, for the most part, had sensibly avoided gaining too many enemies close to their home turf, and the few that _were_ present were those in direct competition with the Fowl criminal empire – in other words, other organized crime syndicates.

 _This man is clearly a skilled assassin, despite his playing around, and skilled individuals expect to be paid for their troubles, which means that in order to hire them, one needs a fairly large budget to pull from. Now, who have the Fowls angered in recent years, in Europe, that could pay for someone of this man's caliber?_

There weren't many large European criminal organizations that the Fowls had gotten on the bad side of during his father's time on the Fowl empire's throne… but there _was_ a syndicate that Artemis had recently hacked, in a fit of painful emotion, a bare few weeks ago - a syndicate which had a decent fortune under its belt, despite its small size.

"Out of curiosity," Artemis mused, as if having an idle conversation with the man instead of confirming a theory that could prove the difference between life and death for him, "was it the _Brise de Mer_ that sent you?"

The smile froze on the man's face. Only for the barest fraction of a moment, but he saw it nonetheless. _Jackpot._

The Brise de Mer was one half of the Corsican mafia, based in Northern Corsica, a small island off the Mediterranean shores of Italy and France. Despite the island's small size, and the divide between the Brise and the other half of the Corsican mafia, the Colonna clan, the Corsican mafia did a brisk trade in all manner of illegal goods throughout the entire Mediterranean. They were more well known for smuggling and the occasional human trafficking, however, and not for their hackers, so for Artemis to have slipped up so thoroughly that the _Brise de Mer_ had found him…

The assassin's expression cleared and darkened, blood-thirst creeping back in to fill the empty spaces left by shock. "Well, aren't you a clever little brat. No wonder the Fowl empire's still ticking." There was a deafening _click_ as the man deftly turned off the safety on his gun, and Artemis's heart rate spiked. "Too bad it won't keep ticking after today."

Movement, out of the corner of his eyes – Butler, slowly and silently beginning to rise to his feet, hand going for his gun – but Artemis only had eyes for the gun pressed against his forehead, and the dangerous expression on the assassin's face as his finger creaked on the trigger. The amusement was gone, and its place was nothing but a cold-blooded lack of mercy.

 _I miscalculated,_ he realized, barely able to keep his breathing steady. _I shouldn't have asked. If I know his employers, even if I were killed, Butler could track him down, and he_ knows _it._

 _There's no feasible way he'll let me live now. And Butler's too far away to stop him._

 _I'm going to die._

The realization sent a cold wave of terror sweeping through his body, and every sense seemed magnified in the wake of his realization. He was hyper-aware of _everything_ – the cold steel of the gun against his forehead, the crinkling of cloth as the man's gloved ( _no fingerprints to be left behind, no one will know who did it)_ hands began to squeeze the trigger in agonizing slow motion, Butler lurching to his feet and lunging for the assassin, too slowly, _too slowly,_ even _Butler_ couldn't make it in time -

And a sudden _burning_ , like the world's worst heartburn, was rising up in his throat and filling his body with fire.

 _I can't die. I_ ** _can't_** _die here. If I die, then my father is as good as dead in Britva's hands. Butler is as good as dead – no sensible assassin would leave eyewitnesses, and he got knocked out so easily._ ** _Mother_ **_is as good as dead. She's a_ ** _Fowl_ **_, if only by marriage._

 _I can't let that happen. I_ ** _won't_ **_let that happen._

 ** _I_** **_REFUSE to DIE._**

Instinct is a powerful thing. Every animate being, from the smallest bacteria to the massive blue whale, wants nothing more than to _live_ , and it is instinct which powers their efforts to stay alive, even in the direst of straits. When one's back is to the wall, when there is no way to _think_ their way out of death, it is _instinct_ that all creatures reach for to save them. And for all his logic and all his backup plans, Artemis Fowl the Second was no different from any other creature in the animal kingdom. He had no weapons, no help that could reach him in time, no words that could convince the assassin before him to stop, no backup plans to save himself from the bullet moments away from piercing his skull.

And so, in the face of his sheer determination to _not die_ , Artemis's mind instinctively grappled for anything, _anything_ to stop his end from coming – and the world around him _burned._

Later, when Artemis woke up from a two-day-long sleep, all he would remember was the world around him dissolving into brilliant indigo, and then collapsing to the floor when a bullet miraculously did not embed itself into his brain and everything going dark.

Butler would remember far, far more. He would remember a sudden stillness in the air, the calm before a storm, and then an indigo inferno _exploding_ out of his principal's body, throwing the assassin away from him and raking burns across the man's face. He would remember the assassin spitting curses in French, the horrified _recognition_ in the man's face, before he shot the man between the eyes and a body hit the floor – and then, as he turned back to his principal, watching the firestorm licking across the boy's skin die in moments, not even a spark left to show that it had ever been there.

Even as the manservant rushed to catch his charge as the child genius toppled over, unconscious, he would wonder if he'd been hallucinating the indigo fire. Children could not spontaneously burst into blue-violet flames when they were in mortal peril, no matter how unusual those children were.

The burns on the assassin's body and the wispy indigo sparks that Artemis would somehow call up days later would be more than enough proof that _apparently_ , in this strange parallel world Butler had somehow found himself in, they most certainly _could_. And at that point, with the evidence bobbing in front of his eyes in the form of the flickering ghost-light in his charge's hands, all Butler would be able to think was that he should have realized that he hadn't been hallucinating. After all, of all the people he'd ever met, Artemis Fowl the Second was the foremost expert at doing the impossible.

* * *

 **I had way too much fun writing this, especially when coming up with the worldbuilding stuff. Making fusion worlds is fun!**

 **Speaking of worldbuilding – unlike with M est P, I'm going to try to integrate the worldbuilding directly into the fanfiction itself here, so it's actually a part of the text and you're learning about this fusion world along with Artemis. I might include some tidbits in the notes though.**

 **And before anyone asks about it – no, Butler will not end up getting Dying Will Flames. Firstly, because logically a bodyguard is prepared to die for their charge, and thus would not garner the necessary motivation to go Active in this 'verse. And secondly… I have PLANS~ *cackles***


	2. In Which Answers are Sought

**Does anybody have any recommendations for a site I could post un-betaed/un-edited writings on for people to look at? Because daniel recommended I get someone else to help me edit this particular fic since he knows next to nothing about KHR, and I'm… not really comfortable sharing the google doc that I write the fics in with other people at the moment, since that would let them know what my email address is... So I'd need to figure out something else before I ask anybody else to beta these things.**

* * *

Consciousness, when it returned to Artemis, came slowly and in hazy, indistinct pieces.

The first thing he truly became aware of again when he began to rise from the mire of sleep was… warmth. Warmth in his veins, behind his eyes, in his lungs, permeating every inch of his body from his scalp to the tips of his toes. It was the sort of warmth one felt when stretched lazily out in the sun or before a cozily crackling fireplace, the sort one longed to bask in and relax as all your troubles melted away. The next sensation he registered was equally comforting, the familiar silken feel of his own bedcovers and a familiar weight pulled over him – sheets and blanket, smelling faintly of lavender.

Then his slow return to wakefulness came to an abrupt end as the remaining scattered pieces of his consciousness forced themselves back together in one fell swoop, and memories returned.

 _A man with blue-streaked hair, Butler falling to the floor, a cold gun pressing against his forehead, cruel and bloodthirsty words, and the world turning indigo and then_ ** _burning._**

Artemis's eyes snapped open.

He was lying in his bed, in his own bedroom, staring up at the plaster ceiling as, in the twilit gardens beyond his window, the unusually large crickets of the Fowl Estate chirped. His bedside lamp had been lit, the bulb bathing the room in dim golden light and dark shadows. A turn of his head let him take in the sight of his desk chair meters from where it should be, poised at his bedside and empty save for a large suit jacket draped across the back. Save for that single piece of displaced furniture, his room was pristine and unchanged, just as he'd left it hours before his life had ever been threatened.

 _… I should not be alive._

He _knew_ it, somewhere deep down in his bones, in the same place that he had _known_ that his father was still alive. He could remember, with crystalline perfection, the barrel of a pistol pressed painfully into his brow, could remember the cruel lilt of the assassin's amusement as the man held the Fowl heir at gunpoint, could remember the cold clarity of the man's face as Artemis's words tore away his sheer mask and revealed the full intensity of the hardened killer beneath.

He remembered _Butler_ , struggling to pull himself up off the carpet and lunging forward in defense of his endangered charge, much too slowly to be able to reach him in time. And then… then the world dissolving into color and fire, the gun gone and the carpet rushing up to meet him as he fell.

… _What happened?_

The boy let out a slow, tremulous breath, and took one long moment to simply lay there and _breathe,_ taking comfort in the feel of his own heartbeat _(his heart was still beating, he was still_ ** _alive_** _)_ before he reluctantly hauled himself upright and out of bed. Alive he may have been, but now was _not_ the time to dawdle. There was far too much to be done, far too many questions he needed answers for, and a distinct possibility of there not being enough time for him to get the answers he needed. How had the assassin made it past the manor's security? How had neither he nor Butler seen him, when the only two entrances the man could have used were the locked and un-shattered office window and the door that had been well within both their sights? Just who was the assassin? Had he been permanently disposed of or merely imprisoned? And, most importantly, even if the man had been taken care of and would cause no further trouble, would his employers send anybody else to finish the job?

The floor felt impossibly cold in the few moments it took him to locate his shoes and slip them on. As if in response to the chill (or perhaps in response to the faint blip in his heartbeat as the icy floorboards sent a small shock through his system), the lazy-sunlight heat that had sunk deep into his bones seemed to intensify, soft warmth metamorphosing into something much hotter, as if his blood was heating up in his veins.

That… was _not_ something he'd expected. He'd thought the warmth was from being nestled firmly in warm bedcovers, and yet… it was still there, and it had _reacted_ to his own biorhythms as if it were a part of his body, as if it were _alive._ That wasn't natural, not in the _slightest._ Had something happened to his sensory neurons, somehow, following his fall in his office?

His heartbeat picked up speed at the thought ( _neural damage would be disastrous to him, as a boy whose nervous system was his best asset and his only chance of finding his father alive)_ , and the warmth _surged_ , frothing up beneath his skin until he felt like his skin should be glowing from the heat. A flicker of indigo darted across the back of one hand even as he watched, eyes wide and disbelieving.

 _This… this can't be real. It_ ** _can't_** _be. Human beings do not_ ** _glow_** _when they become emotional!_

And yet, apparently, he _was._

The light grew brighter as a moment of fear swept through him, wispy tendrils of off-white appearing in the wavering indigo flames. Then he forced himself to close his eyes and ignore the impossible florescence licking over his skin as logic caught up to him.

 _This cannot be real. It is_ ** _not_** _real. And on the off chance that it_ ** _is_** _as real as it looks, it responds to_ ** _emotion._** _Either way, I must calm down._

Deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Artemis stood there for several long moments, taking in air slowly and then letting it out again until his heartbeat slowed back down and his thoughts became less agitated. The strange warmth, having focused partially into an intense point on the back of his hand as the hallucinatory flames had appeared, diffused along with his anxiety, sinking back beneath his skin and settling deep in muscle and bone once more.

When he opened his eyes again, having reclaimed his calm, the misty light was gone, not even a single burn or speck of ash to show the "flames" had ever been there, and he no longer felt like his skin should be imitating heated metal.

 _Butler,_ he thought, resolutely ignoring the unnatural feeling and the niggling doubts it had created about his own mental health. _I need to call Butler_ ** _now_** _._

His phone was where it always was, thank _goodness_ – in the top drawer of his bedside table, near the front and easily accessible. He flipped it open and turned it on, checking the battery readout and then dialing Butler's number.

The phone rang once. Twice. Artemis felt his anxiety rearing its head once more as the phone remained unanswered for far longer than it normally would. Had Butler even made it out of that horrid situation alive? The coat draped over the chair by his bed was large enough to be his and would, therefore, suggest that yes, his bodyguard had survived, and was even relatively unharmed, but with his own body displaying unnatural symptoms, how could he be sure he was remembering correctly?

Then Butler picked up the phone on the third ring, dispelling his fears for the moment and cooling the volatile full-body hot flashes back down to manageable levels.

"Artemis?"

He almost sighed with relief, closing his eyes. _Alive. He's alive._ "Yes Butler, it's me."

Unlike his charge, Butler apparently had no qualms about expressing his own relief, because a faint sigh gusted through the phone's speakers. "Good. I was wondering how long it was going to take you to wake up. You were asleep for two _days_ , sir."

Biofeedback. His heart practically leaped up his throat in shock, indigo sparks _(not real, not real, they can't be real, humans_ ** _can't_** _just throw_ ** _sparks_** _like that!)_ flaring off of his skin before disappearing into wispy trails of mist that vanished in seconds. _Two days. He had been asleep for_ ** _two days?_** _How?! Why?!_ The only possible explanation he could think of was that he _had_ indeed somehow obtained some sort of mental damage, but what could have happened to cause it?!

"Two days," he said, numbly. "And you did not take me to a hospital?"

"The assassin that came after you has been taken care of, Artemis, but that doesn't mean that there aren't others on the way. I didn't want to risk your life taking you into an insecure building like that, especially when this man somehow got past state-of-the-art security to reach you."

Artemis swallowed. "'Taken care of?'"

"Yes. Taken care of _permanently_ , at that."

Dead, then. Somehow, Butler must have gotten to the man before he could pull the trigger. At least that was one less problem to deal with. Still…

"How on _Earth_ did you reach the man in time to stop him from shooting? I thought you wouldn't be able to make it in time."

There was a moment of silence. Then another. Then a third. Artemis felt his heart begin to pump rapidly again, the damnable hallucinations once more fluttering before his vision.

"I didn't reach him in time," Butler said finally. "I was still practically on the other side of the room, and he was about to pull the trigger."

"Then, how…?"

"To be honest, sir?" Butler's voice was suffused with confusion, which did not fill Artemis with confidence. "I'm not exactly sure _what_ happened. I must have gotten hit over the head pretty hard, because I'm sure I saw you spontaneously combust into indigo fire."

Artemis stared blankly ahead for a few precious seconds, slowly processing these words. Then, unbidden, his eyes dropped back down to the back of his hand.

It was… _theoretically_ possible that Butler could have obtained some form of brain damage that had caused him to hallucinate. However, if that _had_ been the case, then Butler would likely have not been able to take out the assassin at all, let alone in time to stop him from killing Artemis.

And… well, as unlikely as it seemed for one to _burst into indigo flames_ in any way, shape or form… just how likely was it for two people to experience the same hallucination?

"Artemis?"

The Irish boy sucked in a deep breath, his manservant's words _(professional but worried if you knew what to listen for)_ bringing him back down to solid earth once more. "I'm…" _I'm not entirely sure that was a hallucination, but how can you tell?_ "Where are you right now?"

"Coming up the stairs a few halls down from your bedroom. Sir, what's wrong?"

Artemis slowly extended one hand out in front of himself, studying his hand as if it held the secrets of the universe itself for him to find.

"I'm… I'm _not sure,_ Butler. I feel physically fine, but…" He made a weak noise in the back of his throat, an attempt at a chuckle that was far too weak to actually escape. "What are the odds of two people having the same hallucination?"

"… I'll be there in a few minutes."

Artemis nodded silently, though Butler could not see him, and hung up, setting his phone down on the table. For another long few seconds, he stared at his hand, thoughts whirling at a million miles per hour.

 _It could be a hallucination. It probably is, as unlikely as it is for two people to see the same visions. But what if it isn't? Is there a way to tell what's real or not?_

He flexed his fingers, noting distantly that his body was cooling down as he settled into cold analysis.

 _Heat and fire that does not burn… heat and fire that reacts to my emotions, as if it is simply another form of biofeedback. Flames are_ ** _not_** _supposed to act like that._

Wind and dry fuel would fan flames and make them hotter. Cutting off the oxygen surrounding flames, with a wet blanket, would put them out. Create empty patches of earth with no fuel to burn, and the fire would be turned away. And, most importantly, fire _always_ burned what it touched.

 _And yet these flames do not burn me, and Butler saw the same flames I myself am seeing. This should not be possible, and yet it seems like this might actually be happening._

On the off chance this _was_ real… well, Artemis had read enough fantasy novels where the characters had flashy magical powers to know that said flashy magical powers could be controlled, after extensive training or using rather judicious uses of willpower. While he seriously doubted that any of the more _esoteric_ techniques in any of those novels would be of any use, in this context it seemed sensible to assume this indigo fire could be controlled.

If it _was_ possible to control these flames _,_ though, then the question was _how_. They seemed tied to the odd increase of body heat, which responded to his emotions and agitated biorhythms, but that was more or less everything he knew about them at this point in time. He had no idea how they could be controlled, or even if it was possible at all. They seemed to act instinctively, without any logic or rhyme or reason to them. Just another automatic process of the body, for all their impossibly supernatural appearance.

He turned his hand over so it was palm-up, staring at it as if it would burst into flame again. Save for a slight rise of temperature under his skin, nothing happened, and Artemis had a brief moment where he felt impossibly foolish. As if any of this were actually possible. How could he even be entertaining the idea?

Then the door suddenly opened, and Artemis jumped, his pulse skyrocketing. His hand abruptly burst into flames, sparks rising and expanding to twist into a writhing orb of flickering, misty, agitated flames that cast harsh indigo highlights on Butler's startled face.

The two of them stared at the orb as it slowly faded away, first into blue-violet embers that flickered in unstable, volatile rhythm, and then sluggishly dissolved into wisps of off-white fog that vanished like morning dew.

Finally, after several long, pregnant seconds, Artemis slowly lowered his hand, studying the skin that the flames seemed to have emerged from for damage. When he found none he pursed his lips, and then looked up.

"Butler," he said, very quietly. "I don't suppose you have any contacts that might be able to shed light on this… situation?"

Butler shook his head soundlessly. "Not one that I know of, Artemis. I've never heard of _anything_ like this before."

And if Butler, the man who'd served in a wide array of militaries all over the world and even done a stint as a mercenary in the criminal underworld, hadn't heard of oddly-colored spontaneous human combustion before, then it wasn't likely that anybody in his circle of contacts had either.

"But," the bodyguard continued, "I think I might have an idea where to start looking." The Eurasian man stepped into the room, carefully closing the door behind him, and strode over to the chair at Artemis's bedside to retrieve his jacket. "The assassin saw those flames too when they first appeared, and if his expression was any indication, then he _recognized_ them."

Artemis grimaced. A _mafia-sent assassin_ had recognized these flames? He wasn't certain he liked the implications of that. If someone _recognized_ the flames, then that meant that the ones he had witnessed itself were not the first to have ever appeared, and he had never found any information to suggest for such a thing as _spontaneous human combustion_ like this to actually be possible.

That meant that, once again, a mafia possessed information that he did not, and, this time, the mafia in question might very well know something about Artemis that even he himself was not aware of, and that could prove _disastrous._

 _Unacceptable. I cannot allow this, not when I've nearly_ ** _died_** _to them._

It was all well and good to think that, but, once again, Artemis had next to no idea where to begin looking for the information he was missing…

Actually, no, that wasn't quite true. He did have _one_ possible lead.

"… have you already attempted a face trace on the assassin?"

"I managed to get a picture of him off the office security feed, and sent it to some people I know in Interpol. I haven't gotten a call back from them yet." Butler's eyes narrowed. "And I don't want you actively antagonizing any of the mafias by hacking into their systems looking for information, at least not before we figure out how the man got in."

Artemis narrowed his own eyes right back at the manservant. "Butler, I will _not_ be making the same mistake a second time."

Butler opened his mouth, no doubt to continue his protests, but his charge shook his head and kept speaking before he could. "Butler, this assassin completely bypassed the manor's security and snuck into the office _while we were both inside._ A man of that caliber will be expected to return to his employers, and when he does not, they will become suspicious."

The bodyguard closed his mouth, looking stonily displeased, and Artemis turned away, grabbing his phone off the table.

"I understand your wish for caution," he assured the man, "but we have a limited window of time in which to look for information on my attacker, who sent him, and what they know. Once that window is closed, we might not have another chance."

He took a deep breath to calm himself (a wisp of indigo fluttered past the edge of his vision), and then continued.

"We might not have another chance," he repeated, voice soft and sharp, "and I am _not_ going to waste _this_ one."

* * *

The next few weeks, in Artemis's mind, were an exercise in frustration.

Butler, though still obviously leery of allowing Artemis to trawl through criminal databanks in search of answers, was willing to listen to the boy's logic, and did not try to persuade him from another course of action. After making sure his young charge had his needs tended to (by forcing him to actually eat and drink something before beginning his search), the bodyguard retreated to the manor's security room to keep one eye on the grounds in case of another intrusion. Roughly every hour or so, the giant manservant would check in, opening the office door quietly to make certain the Fowl heir was not yet dead on the floor, and, upon seeing the black-haired boy still alive, would retreat back to the security center. The bodyguard's paranoia was at an all-time high, but thankfully, he knew better than to bother Artemis with anything less than food or an emergency and was an otherwise unobtrusive presence.

Unfortunately, the sheer lack of information that Artemis was searching for was the exact opposite of _unobtrusive._

Artemis did not actually hack the Corsican mafia immediately. For all he couldn't afford to waste time, he had reluctantly admitted to himself that he might not be at his best directly following a forty-eight hour sleep, and that it was probably _not_ the best idea to perform an all-out hacking assault on mafia databases until he was one hundred percent certain that he wouldn't make another crucial mistake. Instead, he had carefully checked his own systems, set up several new aliases complete with forged paperwork and false internet histories, double-checked to make certain his IP re-router was functioning at one-hundred percent, and then had spent some time combing the public domain of the internet in order to make absolutely certain that he hadn't missed anything that might suggest the existence of flames like the ones his body now seemed to produce.

As it turned out, no, he had not. There wasn't a single blog post, article, or YouTube video that even so much as _hinted_ at the existence of flames like his. There was practically an overabundance of data on normal flames and heat – how to make flames burn different colors, what temperature water boiled at, forest fires, prairie grass fires, how to create a fire break to turn either of those flames away from what could not afford to be burned, even data on the kinds of burns human beings could suffer from various forms of fire, but not one speck of information about wispy, indigo fire that emerged from human tissues and reacted to the biological rhythms of the body. Even the dark web, which Artemis rarely ventured into (he did have _some_ standards), offered no insight when he reluctantly checked some of the less questionable sites. With the internet having failed him, Artemis finally turned his attention away from the World Wide Web and into the binary world of mafia databases.

The first thing Artemis had done, once making absolutely certain that _this_ _time_ he would not leave a single digital footprint behind, had been to hack into the systems of the _Brise de Mer_ in order to search for their mystery assassin. He had found the man easily enough – Charles Beaumont, thirty-one years old, born in Porto-Vecchio. The man had fallen in with the local crime lords at an early age, at first as a small-time smuggler who had little to no luck with his business ventures for several years. After a decade of working on the docks, there had been a shooting when two parties from both the _Brise de Mer_ and Collona Clan had a rather violent disagreement, which Beaumont had miraculously survived despite having apparently been shot several times in both lungs. After the incident, the men in charge of both halves of the Corsican mafia had begun to attempt to curry the man's favor, paying exorbitant amounts of money for his smuggling services and even paying for "tutors" for the man that slowly groomed him into the professional killer that had died in Artemis's office.

He found all of this _incredibly_ suspicious. A perusal of Beaumont's smuggling business revealed that the man was worth next to nothing in the face of what shipping lines the Corsican mafia already dominated and that his business was barely lucrative enough to pay for his basic needs. There was no profit to be had in obtaining the man's services when there were so many other smugglers to be hired. Why would both halves of the Corsican mafia attempt to gain his favor, then? It made no sense to do so, and yet both Corsican bosses had spent priceless resources to train the man, obviously in the hopes of coercing him to their side as their own personal hitman.

Unfortunately, trawling through the rest of the man's personal data, and the data dragged up from the depths of hyperspace by Butler's Interpol contacts, had no answers for him, and further fishing about in mafia databases offered no answers either. The only piece of information that Artemis _was_ able to find was a definitive answer to who, precisely, had hired the man to kill him – the boss of the Brise de Mer half of the mafia, one Ibrahim Favre, one of the two individuals attempting to gain the killer's favor.

And for all the information was useful (as it allowed him to track the man's digital footprints with relative ease in order to see if another hit had been placed on Artemis – which there had not been, not yet), it also wasn't everything that the Irish boy had been looking for. There was no evidence of the existence of the mysterious flames – not one _scrap_ of it. Which, firstly, meant that either there was no evidence to be found or it was so thoroughly hidden that even Artemis's own skills couldn't unearth it, and secondly, _yet another mafia had bested Artemis Fowl._

It was a _sour_ thing to realize, when one had spent almost five days trawling through secure files and binary code in an attempt to find information that didn't seem to exist, and it sent Artemis's already foul mood skyrocketing to new heights. It also sent flares of fire and heat crawling along his skin and burned handprints into his desk before he took several minutes to meditate and calm down, and _that_ only served to frustrate him even more, because after five days he was utterly certain that the indigo fire was very, _very_ real.

He hadn't been certain of it at first, thanks to his usual rationale telling him that the particular form of spontaneous human combustion he had apparently discovered was impossible _and_ improbable. Humans did not burst into flames when they became angry or frustrated. However, five long days of slowly rising frustration and the cold fury that came with the realization that someone was once again surpassing him had given him one dubious advantage, allowing him to observe the flames and the rise in temperature that accompanied them.

His initial thoughts, when tentatively accepting that the flames _might_ be real, had been that they reacted to his own biorhythms, as they had initially seemed to appear only when his normal bodily functions changed somehow. When his heart started beating faster out of nervousness or excitement, the heat under his skin would intensify to some degree, and the greater increases in heat (and subsequent bursts of flames) were normally due to more sudden and intense changes in the speed of his heartbeat, and presumably the chemicals released into his system as a result. However, the longer he had observed the various stimuli that the fire reacted to, the more he'd realized that these flames were not as clear-cut as they might first appear. Some emotions did not come with changes in his own bodily rhythms, and yet, when he was feeling particularly frustrated or otherwise upset, the flames still appeared, pulsing in agitation under his skin, and sometimes bursting free to burn whatever he touched with a power that fluctuated depending on the strength of whatever emotion he was experiencing at the time. The heat also seemed to increase in response to drops in temperature, and, after calling for a thermometer from Butler, Artemis discovered that the rise in heat he'd initially thought was just a matter of perspective was an actual rise in body temperature, by several degrees no less.

It was puzzling, to say the least, and Artemis could only assume that the fire reacted both to outside stimuli and to the chemical composition in his own systems changing as he experienced different emotions. Regardless of whether that was actually true or not, though, the point was that he was still missing information, possibly _crucial_ information, about the odd fire – information that could include _how to control it._ He needed that information, if only so he could step foot outside the manor again without possibly setting everything around him ablaze, and getting arrested for arson.

His next step would normally be to scour both his and his father's contacts in the Fowl empire for the information he needed, and, under normal circumstances, he would do so, but… well, how would it sound for a young boy to ask the people around him if people could burst into flame whenever they got angry? He had a _reputation_ to uphold, if he wanted to keep his fingers on the pulse of the criminal empire he now ran, and something ( _something dark and paranoid, a sixth sense for danger that prickled insistently at the back of his skull, like someone was_ ** _watching_** _him)_ told him that it was a horrible idea to display his own flames as evidence before any disbelieving second party – actually, told him that it was a horrible idea to ask just _anyone_ about the flames at all.

And so, with no information to be found, the two weeks directly following the abrupt change in his life was an intense exercise in frustration as he both struggled to find an explanation for what had happened and waited tersely for the Corsican mafia to realize their assassination attempt had failed.

Finally, however, at the end of those two weeks, Artemis decided enough was enough and turned to Butler for assistance.

"Butler," he said, glaring icily at indigo sparks as they scorched speckled patterns into the armrest of his chair, "do you have any contacts from Corsica?"

The manservant, having just set down a fresh cup of tea for him, considered this, also watching the sparks.

"I have a couple," he admitted. "A shiphand working on a ship that docks in Bastia, and a former mafia enforcer who lives here in Dublin."

Artemis's eyebrows jumped up. "Dublin hardly seems the ideal location to retire to."

Butler shrugged. "He isn't _exactly_ retired. He sells some things on the black market sometimes and as far as I know, most of his social circle is made up of criminals. But he's certainly not mafia anymore, and he's been watching the docks for me for years now. How do you think I knew about that assassin that came after you when you were six?"

Artemis steepled his fingers, thinking this information over.

"He's trustworthy, then?"

"He won't give away information to either faction from the Corsican mafia if that's what you mean. I don't know if he knows anything about, well," Butler gestured to the sparks fading away on his chair, " _this."_

Artemis's brows furrowed. For several seconds, he remained quiet and still as a statue, turning a myriad of ideas over in his head.

"… would he be amendable to meeting me?"

Butler raised a brow. "Maybe. Again, I don't know if he knows anything."

"Even if he doesn't know anything about these flames," Artemis said dismissively, "he might know something about where to find information I don't currently have access too. Assuming that he _is_ trustworthy, it can't hurt to try."

Butler eyed the handprint-shaped scorches on the desk, and the speckled burns on Artemis's chair.

"I think it definitely _can_ hurt _someone._ " He said, flatly.

Still, despite the bodyguard's skepticism, he did as Artemis asked, and left the room to call his former mafia contact. He came back several minutes later to report that the man would indeed be willing to talk to Artemis, provided they choose a semi-public place to meet and that each party only brought a single combatant with them. The conditions were sensible, and, according to Butler, the man had been more than a little amused that "Butler's little principal" had been digitally assaulting his former boss in the mafia off-and-on for several weeks. With the man's taciturn agreement, it was a simple matter to schedule a meeting at a small family-owned restaurant just off the business district of Dublin where they could discuss matters, with a week until them to allow both parties a chance to prepare any information and funds that might be needed.

 _And,_ Artemis thought dryly, _a chance to scout each other and the restaurant out to make certain we won't betray one another._

Well, so long as the man's information was worth the trouble, _he_ wouldn't be the one doing the betraying.

* * *

The day of the meeting dawned miserably grey, chilly, and laden with fog. Artemis was quick to claim several jackets, layering them one on top of the other and taking a scarf from the closet near the door to wrap around his neck (he had no desire to burst into flame in a public place, and thus cause a panic, just because he was _too cold_ ), before following Butler out to one of the Fowl family's less conspicuous cars.

He felt irritatingly _aware_ of the flame bubbling beneath his skin for the entire drive, feeling the heat ebb and flow, and occasionally watching an indigo streak flash across gloved fingers and along the edges of his sleeves when a bump in the road caught him unawares. He kept his breaths steady, drawing in lungfuls of air and letting them out slowly, watching the world outside fly past in various dull shades of color to distract himself from thoughts that could make him uneasy.

This would be the first time he'd been out in public since the assassination attempt. The first time in _weeks_ he had left the manor since he'd first started feeling the probably supernatural flames. This could prove _disastrous_ , if he could not keep his calm and combusted as he had before in the safety of his home, but a Fowl did not let such things dictate their life. A Fowl rose to meet the challenge and surpassed it every time.

It wasn't until they reached the meeting spot, and he stepped out of the car and onto the slightly damp tarmac, that he realized that something felt _wrong._

Well, no, that wasn't quite right. This wasn't the same _wrong_ feeling that had persisted for days at a time, whenever he was on the verge of attempting correspondence with contacts that might or might not possess knowledge of what his flames were, the _wrong_ that was half paranoia and half uncertainty. This felt less like something had gone pear-shaped in the world around him and more as if the world was simply paying _much_ closer attention to him than it had before.

The restaurant he and Butler's contact were meeting in was in a neighborhood that was a perfect mix of the "bad" parts of town and the rich, suit-adorned streets of the business district. There were a few mobs that operated in the area, but unlike in the darker streets of Dublin, there was little to no violent crime to be found here, just the occasional black-market dealing and pickpocketing. The streets were even relatively clean, and many respectful, if not overly profitable, businessmen and businesswomen walked along the streets or drove cars down it at all hours of the day. There were few people currently out on the street at the moment, most having preemptively found shelter from the clouds threatening a rainstorm in the near future, and what few there were paid the two newcomers no mind, save for the occasional double-take when men and women alike spotted Butler and briefly wondered at his sheer mountainous height.

And, Artemis noticed suddenly, save for the few people on the street whose gazes were drawn, not to Butler, but to _him._ Unlike the other glances on the streets, _these_ eyes remained fixed on him, some of them widening in surprise or recognition, while others just… _stared._ And the eyes belonged to all manners of people – businesspeople in jackets and coats, some toting umbrellas under one arm or in their purses, a pair of teenagers sitting a little ways away with Gameboys held unattended in their hands, a man in a leather jacket and possessing a gold nose ring, watching him with narrowed eyes.

The number of eyes on him, for an unknown reason at that, was _eerie,_ and Artemis was forced to take several surreptitious deep breaths to keep himself from becoming too agitated.

"We should get inside," Butler murmured. Artemis glanced sideways at him, and found the bodyguard watching his unexpected observers as well, eyes sharp and merciless. One large hand was positioned faux-casually near one of his hidden gun holsters, and the man's muscles were tensed in preparation for a fight.

Butler's readiness for action, Artemis found, was more than a little comforting. He nodded sharply, and, eyes still on his watchers (most of whom had quickly looked away and gone back to whatever they were doing previously when they saw Butler staring at them), followed his bodyguard into the restaurant.

The building was almost entirely empty when they stepped inside and shook off jackets and scarves. Artemis scanned the eatery carefully, more than a little perturbed thanks to the unnerving stares on the streets, but found no-one but a couple of waiters and a single young woman manning the reception desk, writing something in a notebook. The eatery was not a particularly lavish one, but not a cheap one either, filled with tables and booths and decorative pictures on the walls just like any other casual restaurant one might enter. There was a fireplace against one wall, built from rust-colored bricks and surrounded by a wide flat surface of the same material, likely to keep any small children that might be present from being able to reach the fireplace when it was lit. The only customers visible in the restaurant – a tall dark-skinned man a navy blue jacket and a short, stocky woman whose hair was hidden by a knit hat – were seated casually at one of the tables near the fireplace, the woman appearing to look over a menu and the man drinking something from a mug.

Artemis was _not_ fooled by the casual atmosphere around that table. The woman was tense, and likely watching the restaurant from behind her menu, and the man, despite his apparently lazy posture, was angled towards the door, obviously waiting for someone.

"Hello, sir!" The woman at the reception desk said cheerfully as he and Butler approached. "A table for two?"

Butler paused for a moment – obviously expecting Artemis to respond to the woman's question with a scathing comment, as he usually did – and, when Artemis did not respond, too busy keeping an eye on the occupied table by the fireplace ( _something still felt wrong here, no matter that nobody seemed to be actively staring at him like out on the street_ ) he shook his head.

"No m'am," he said. "We're here to meet the people at the table over there." He gestured subtly towards said table.

"Oh, you're with Mr. Moreau? My apologies, sir!"

Butler gave her a slight nod, but Artemis ignored her, and the two stepped around the desk to walk towards their intended table.

 _Liam Moreau,_ Artemis thought. _Forty-seven years old, born in downtown Paris and a former Corsican mafioso. Technically retired, and a neutral party with contacts throughout several of the small mobs that operate out of downtown Dublin. Most of his income comes from the local black market, but he also runs a small shop near the docks, where he sells souvenirs to tourists. His guard, Susanna López, thirty-five years old, born Madrid, Spain, also a retired mafioso from Corsica. She works as an academic tutor for the children of one of the local mobsters, but she and Moreau fled from the Corsican mafia together after a disagreement with the boss of the Collona clan, so it's likely the two of them are old acquaintances, and he called her in in case he needs backup._

 _Nothing seems amiss with this situation, and yet… why do I feel like I'm missing something_ ** _again?_**

Halfway to the table, he got his answer as both former mafioso suddenly sat up straight. Moreau put down his mug, and Ms. López lowered her menu, and both adults turned their heads towards him in an unsettling imitation of the stares on the street outside. Their stares, unlike the ones from passersby on the tarmac, only lasted for a moment, but the similarities were _unmistakable_.

"Ah, there you are, Butler!" Moreau said, eyes glinting curiously, when they reached the table. He stood up, reaching out to shake Butler's hand (Butler allowed it, though his eyes were narrowed in suspicion), and then turned to Artemis with a crooked smile somewhere between a smirk and kindly, and held out his hand to him as well. "And you'd be Butler's little principal, I take it? The kid that stole him away from the underground?"

Artemis studied his hand warily for a moment, half expecting a concealed knife to show itself, but when one didn't, he cautiously accepted the handshake with a stiff nod. "Artemis Fowl the Second. It's a pleasure to meet you."

The man snorted, gesturing to the two empty seats at the table. "So formal. _Relax_ , Fowl, neither me nor Susanna is going to gut you right here at the table."

"Is that an implication for gutting me when I am elsewhere?" Artemis asked, a touch icily.

López rolled her eyes at this, and Moreau chuckled. "Nah. Even when I was mafia, I never killed kids. Even hardened criminals have some lines they won't cross."

Keeping his eye on the two adults, Artemis gingerly lowered himself into the seat directly across from the black man, next to the wall, and Butler, after scanning the restaurant for possible threats and finding none, did the same. Moreau pushed an extra menu that had been resting beneath his elbow towards him, and Artemis, still feeling rather cautious, slowly pulled the menu the rest of the way across the table with narrowed eyes.

"Forgive me for my caution," he said, carefully. "I am still rather… unsettled, after the most recent attempted assassination of my person."

"I never would have guessed," López muttered sarcastically. Her companion, however, tilted his head to one side, studying Artemis with sharp eyes as if trying to find a lie on his face.

"Well, it's understandable," he said, civilly. "After all, thanks to me, most assassins never reach the Fowl Estate. This one must have been one hell of a skilled bastard to get by me without me noticing. Sorry about not stopping him in time, Fowl."

He fell silent, and the table stayed quiet as Artemis slowly scanned the menu (wrinkling his nose at some of the choices), and then, when one of the waiters drifted over to their table, ordered the least distasteful meal for himself and a cup of tea.

Once the waiter was gone, taking their menus with him, Moreau finally spoke. "So. You want information on the Corsican mafia. What are you looking for?"

Artemis folded his hands on the tabletop. "Information on their digital security. After their assassin failed, I attempted to track down information on some of the… unusual circumstances of this particular hit, and was unable to find what I was looking for."

"Unusual circumstances, huh?" The man tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowing. "What kind of unusual circumstances are we talking about here?"

Artemis pursed his lips. "Unusual as in the assassin somehow got past the manor's state-of-the-art security system without either myself or Butler noticing."

Moreau propped himself up by the elbows, his posture casual and yet strangely anticipatory. "And somehow got past Butler even when he was in the same room as him."

That was _not_ a question. It was a _statement._ It took most of Artemis's willpower to retain the cold passiveness of his facial expression and body language ( _how had the man known? Butler hadn't told him, had he?_ ), but the damnable unnatural _heat_ had other ideas, frothing inside his body like water about to boil over. He felt a mere fraction of a degree away from throwing sparks.

Moreau's eyes widened a fraction, and a look of definite interest swept across his face.

"I _thought_ I felt something odd when you came in," the man said. One of his hands came to rest over the other, fingers toying with a thin, plain ring on the man's left hand. "You're not just looking for information on the assassin or his mafia, are you kid? I bet you're looking for something just a little bit _different._ "

López stiffened, her eyes widening a fraction. "Liam, _wait!_ " she hissed.

Moreau ignored her and lifted his fingers away from his ring as he spoke his next words. "Maybe… something like this?"

And then the ring _glowed._ A flicker of gentle cyan rose from the metal, adorned with lines of paler blue similar to the patterns formed by light refracting through the surface of a pool of water. The glowing shape was oddly smooth, far more stable than the sparks and wispy tongues of fire produced by Artemis's own body, but the glow was still unmistakably a _flame._

Artemis was distantly aware of Butler stilling besides him in shock, but his eyes remained fixed on the blue light, his breath catching in his throat.

"Let me guess what happened when that assassin came after you, kid," Moreau said, oh-so-softly. "There was nothing on the cameras, was there? No sign of intruders, not one. And then, when you and Butler were both in the same room, the man appeared from what seemed to be thin air. He incapacitated Butler long enough to be able to deal with you without him interfering, and then held you at gunpoint, yes?"

The restaurant seemed to have gone eerily silent, his hushed words filling the empty air. López's eyes were darting around the room as if looking for an invisible threat, but Artemis barely noticed – Moreau's words, and the blue flame fluttering on his ring, were almost hypnotic.

"And then," Moreau continued, his voice almost a whisper, "suddenly, as you realized you were about to die, you _refused to accept it._ And then the world around you was _set ablaze._ " He closed his hand into a fist, and, as Artemis watched, eyes wide, the blue flame guttered, and then flickered out of existence, disappearing as if it had never been there, leaving not even a speck of ash behind, _just like his own flames._

"And now," the black man smirked, "you're looking for answers. _What are these flames? Why do I have them? How do they work?_ And, most of all, _how does the mafia know about them?_ You're not going to be able to find them looking through mafia databases, kid. Bad things happen to the ones that expose this information to the wrong people, and the digital world isn't nearly as secure as it seems at first glance. The only places this information exists is on paper, on flash drives, and in people's heads. And, well, you're lucky enough to have one such head right in front of you that's all too willing to talk."

Artemis sucked in a breath, blue eyes finally rising up from the man's hand to meet Moreau's much darker orbs.

"If this information is so hard to come by," he said, throat dry, "then why are you offering it to be now? Do you really expect me to be so desperate as to take it without knowing the consequences?"

Moreau snorted and leaned back in his chair, arms crossing. "What do you take me for, Fowl? I might not have your level of smarts, but I'm not a complete idiot. I'm not offering because I think you're desperate. And as for the consequences?"

His eyes darkened and shone like black embers. "The _consequences_ of you taking my offer will be a new world opening up to you, and you're gonna take that whole damn world by _storm._ "

His words rang with a feeling of the absolute, with utter certainty and eager anticipation, filling the room with a stillness, as if the storm the man had predicted was about to roll in. The air was so thick with the feeling that Artemis almost felt as if he could _taste it,_ and a mirror of Moreau's anticipation built in his own chest, pulsing along with the searing heat in his veins.

 _This could be the beginning of something. If I accept this offer, I'll have the answers I've been looking for, the answers that the Corsican mafia has hidden from me… and it might just give me the edge I need to finally catch up to Britva, and find where he is keeping my father._

 _But can I afford to accept?_

"Well, kid? What do you say?"

… _yes. Yes, I_ ** _can_** _._

Artemis steepled his fingers, and for the first time since the meeting began, gave the man sitting across from him his signature vampire's smile.

"What else can I say, Mr. Moreau, but _I accept your offer?"_

* * *

 **It may seem a little OOC for Artemis to freak out about the Flames thing, considering how calm and collected he usually is, but hey, if all you remembered when you woke up was someone about to kill you, and then realized you'd suddenly gained the ability to spontaneously combust, you'd probably freak out too. I know I would. (And Butler's probably freaking out too, on the inside, in-between his exasperated thoughts of _"Why does Artemis insist on shaving years off my life with these stunts. Why."_ )**


End file.
